Pass-through tax

A lodging tax your software collects from the guest and hands to you, leaving you to file and pay it to the tax authority yourself.

The opposite arrangement is remittance, where the platform or PMS is registered with the jurisdiction and pays the tax on your behalf. Both appear on the guest's bill the same way, so the distinction only shows up in your own reporting, and getting it wrong in either direction is expensive: you either double-pay a tax already remitted, or you under-file one you assumed was covered.

Which taxes are remitted and which are passed through varies by platform, by plan tier and by jurisdiction, and changes as a vendor completes new registrations. Most PMSes expose the split on each reservation's financial detail and in a tax export.

Related terms: owner statement, length of stay tax.